Hey all...welcome to another blog...its been a wee while since i last updated and a lot has happened. Been one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life and done some amazing things. I last left you in with the bunderberg issues haha...it still makes me laugh when i say that name or think of that place. I think it will do for the rest of my life..brilliant. Right we got to cairns after the 24 hour train journey with my old lady glenice. When we got to our hostel named gilliagans..it was amazing...it was classed as a 5 star backpackers...bulls***..it was a bloody hotel..we had hit the jackpot..the place was amazing. As we both walked in we looked at each other as if to say is this really the right place? it was awesome. The rooms were great..big spacious beds that for once didnt rattle haha. I was very happy with it. As usual the first night in a new town i got right on it..we went down for dinner in the restourant bar area and met two nice girls from yorkshire..spent all night with them taking the piss out of their accent and getting so drunk and dancing. I am getting the feeling throughout my whole trip that northern girls are alot of fun...feel free to prove me wrong any southern ladies...wink wink..hahaha. No doubt i will get s*** for that comment. Staying in cairns was great, the place is absolutelly beautiful and i might even go as far to say that it is possibly my favourite place in australia to date. It is a city but the centre is more like a seaside town..very well kept and just beautiful..the nightlife was good and the people were great. Because up north you cannot get in the water because of stingers around the coast most of the year..they have built a man made lagoon type swimming pool area which was lovly..spent alot of time there sunning myself. I suddenly realised there and then that cairns is the hottest or at least felt like the hottest place i have ever been but it was great i loved it. There isnt much to say about cairns, we had a really great time and met some amazing people..as usual i got drunk alot. I met a nice fella called Tom from liverpool..at first i naturally presumed he was a liverpool fan but no and much to my delight he was an everton fan. I was quick to remind him of the 2-1 everton win by the blues that weekend haha. He called me crouchy and the banter carried on after that. He is a nice bloke and bumped into him further down the coast. Like i said cairns was about having fun and one night i got so drunk i was having trouble working the lifts in the hotel...4 floors in the hotel..doors open you press a button it takes you to your floor and you exit.....it seems so much easier when you type it and think about it sober haha. I kept pressing a button but it would take me to my floor so everytime this happened i would walk to the kitchen on that floor and start chatting to someone. This mindless lift fun carried on for about an hour until one point i had to go look at a door number to tell me what floor i was on as i had no idea and the girls i was chatting to woudlnt tell me...taking advantage of my drunken state. I think this was the night russ also got so drunk he packed his bags and tried to checkout early which his bags in tow..what a tosser haha..very funny in the morning though.

The plan in cairns was to rent a camper van and travel the coast by ourselves. but when we arrived we checked out the prices and the availiabilty of the vans and it simply wasnt plausable to travel back this way...apart from being way too much in price incuring other costs such as petrol and campsite rent it also wasnt availbale for at least a few eeks...so that was that idea out of the window. I decided i was going to get the greyhound hop on hop off bus back down the coach..alot cheaper and you could take night journeys to cut down the cost of accomodation..it was a plan so it was here i made my plans of where i wanted to stop...what activities i wanted to do on the way down. I think at this point both me and russ had an unwritten understanding that we are to go our seperate ways if need be and no doubt we would want to do slightly different things.

One of the first activities we got the chance to do was snorkelling and diving the great barrier reef. One of the seven wonders of the world and it didnt dissapoint. We turned up at the boat named ocean freedom at the marina. It was a large sailing moter boat that was so swanky..we both fell in love with it..climbed on board to have breakfast supplied and chatted to one of the other 14 people on the trip. The beauty of this trip is we had a huge boat 3 instrutors and only 14 people on the trip so it was great. It took about an hour to get out to one of the outer reefs we would be visting in the day. The day was gorgeous and the surroundings were perfect. All this with some awesome people on board it made for a great day. The instructors were equally as fun and impressive..very entertaining..one of the divers was called pete tong for anyone who knows of the famous DJ...not sure it was his name or a nickname..much debate with everyone throughout the day on that one and i think the jury is still out on it as he signed his name pete tong....hhmmmmm still baffling. When we first got the the first outer reef we all had a safty briefing then put our flippers and snorkels on and jumped it. the ocean was so clear and so warm it was amazing. because the tide was changing that morning when we first entered the water it was slighly choppy so wasnt the calmest of snorkling but was still so good. The reef is beuatiful and the tropical fish was great. Apparently someone saw a shark but when i looked down i couldnt see it, they say it was a white tipped reef shark and would have swam away, phew when someone shouts shark on the great barrier reef it normally sends alarm bells. Throughout the day people were wearing stinger suits because of the threat of jelly fish but the instructors said they hadnt seen any in months. I took my chances and didnt wear one and just wore my boardies, although i did see a small one around the boat in the afternoon but wasnt near me and i got out straight away. Throughout the morning we kept seeing massive sea turtles pop up to the surface so when i decided i wanted to see one upclose i was going for the next one. Everyone was looking for them from the boat so when we spotted one I dived in the water with my fins and snorkle and chased it down slowly before it dived deep down. It was so amazing i got withn one metre of the sea turtle and to be able to watch it underwater from upclose, that sight will remain with me for my enitre life it was beautiful and so big. We did this a few times before we stopped for lunch. After lunch i was persuaded to pay the extra to try scuba diving with one of the instructors. I got suited up and had my safty breifing on how to do but i am very sorry to say i didnt feel comfortable with it needed more time to get relaxed breathing underwater...the other two on my dive picked it up easy and were waiting for me to get it comfortably but it wasnt coming so i said just go...i may have got used to it the longer i tried but the other two were waiting. At least i didnt have to pay for it though as i technically didnt do it. After that i joined everyone else who was snorkelling and we saw some clown fish or should i say NEMO...they were pretty cool. The day finsihed of with some more snorkeling along a different part of the reef which was also so amazing. Russ scuba dived and said it was amazing so alittle bit of me was sad i couldnt get it down right. The day was great a good start to my few days of activities. That night was our last night in cairns so naturally we decided to get on the drink again..this was actually pretty unsuccessful night in respect to not many people were out but me russ and blue were happy getting drunk on the goon wine and when we came back to our room we had a 60 year old chinese man in our room sleeping..his name was sazuki. We all thought we should be quite then russ challenged me to get into his bed and spoon him whilst he was sleeping. Being extremily drunk i accepted this after he said i couldnt do it. I crepped up to his bed looked very seedy then i climbed on and as i did he stirred so i froze half on his bed then i got as clsoe to him as i could and someone took a pic as soon as that was taken i hopped of asap and we all just fell about about laughing when we saw the picture. so much fun. Poor chinese man he was lovly too. A nice fella.

The next day we left cairns..saying bye to some awesome people and realising we had a very great time in cairns.. i still love that place, not sure its a place to live but great for a seaside like town and having fun and oh how can i forget the coyote ugly dancers on the bar in paddy obriens..amazing fun. We left cairns for MISSION BEACH. Mission beach is a quiet resort with not much going on but we werent there for the nightlife as quite frankly the liver needed a rest. Here we had two days worth of activities we had paid for. The first activity was the white water rafting which i was so excited about doing and i was rightly excited it was the best but i will get to that. The second was the dredded skydive..i was crapping myself about this for days but at the same time very excited too. We arrived on mission beach which is a very quiet place but so beautiful to be in. The hostel was lovly also..like an old white house like something out of forest gump it was awesome..well the beds were pretty shoddy. The first full day there we went white water rafting. This experiance and day was the best day of my life I am addicted so much that i want to go in wales when i get home as i hear you can do it there..dad you have to come with me and we can get a group..its so much fun..brillaint. We booked onto the extreme rapids for an extra 30 dollars. The extreme rafters were seperate to the standard day rafters and the group was split. We only had four rafts with the best guides, also we didnt stop as much and did more intense things. Most of the rapids were a grade 3 but we hit some grade 4 rapids. Grade 5 is the heaviest you can do. I cant keep on about how much fun it was. We had a kiwi guide called kiwi funny enough and he was brilliant, a young guy that joined in the banter all day and was so funny giving his safty speaches. Apparently if we saw a crocodile we had to form a tight circle....around the guide lol and oh yeah guys werent allowed to wear speedos or anything tight as they often go up their arses on the boat and the guides dont want to see that...women could wear the smallest bikini they could find though on the otherhand haha...he was awesome. As i got on the coach i saw a guy walk on with a chelsea shirt so I yelled across the coach at him, he asked who i supported, when i said pompey all i heard was a huge groan from the back corner of the bus..yep you guessed it..we had a scummer on board but give him his due he took the s*** well and the banter was funny. On our boat we had four english guys and 2 canadians and we named our team...TEAM RAMROD!!! (the canadians come up with that one) but after that we had a cheer..when we shouted team ramrod we had to follow it with COME GET SOME!!!!! we were shouting this all day and by far had the strongest boat on the water. Everyne new us as team ramrod and even back on the bus kiwi gave us a shout. Throughout the day everyone tried to splash each other on the boats but by the end of the day noone dared splash us, we ruled the river. The rafting was amazing..a little scary in places but so exciting not knowing what is coming next. We had to do some rock diving from 3 or 4 metre rocks into deep water and flow down rapids in just our life jacket..was so intense but fun. I loved working in a team to get through some tight rapids. One guy from our raft fell out a few times but we got him back. I cant tell you how much fun the whole day was..i want to do it again. At the end we had to drop a 10ft waterfall in the boat. On the normal rafting experiance they would go down it in the boat and fall out on purpose but with us we had to go over the fall just in a life jacket. We were told to just take a deep breath and the fall will suck you under with nothing you can do for anything from 7 to 12 seconds underwater, so just relax. It was fun but alittle nerving not being in control. I was under 11 seconds i think its coz i am fat bar-steward! If you havent done and you can you must do white water rafting its amazing and not as dangerous as you think.

So we have done the reef, and the white water rafting. The last thing to do in airlie beach was THE SKYDIVE. I made this decision to do one a few weeks back and had been looking forward to it for ages to do this but when the morning came i was so nervous. Me and russ and the scouser Tom all looked at each other wondering if our brekfast was our last meal. We got picked up early by the pilot and what turned out to be my tandom diver as we had to wait for some people to arrive from cairns so we went for breakfast with them and the way they talked about it, it made me feel really confident and comfortable so after that i was fine. They sometimes do 8 dives a day and only have christmas and new years day off. Once we sorted out all of the paperwork and headed to the airfeild the nerves started to come back. I paid for the video of it so i was being filmed whilst doing the training and safety talk. We got all strapped up and up we went on the plane..I wasnt as nervous as i thought i would be but i wasnt easy though at the same time. When we reached 14000ft in the sky it was time..luckily i was first on the plane which meant last to jump so i could see others first. Its amazing how fast they dissapear from the edge of the plane and also how easy it was to sit on the edge of a plane and just go. As soon as i jumped it was the most intense thing i have ever done in my life..my instructor kept patting me on the shoulders to open my arms from the cross position but i didnt realise so he had to do it a few times. We fell 9000ft in 60 seconds and hit terminal velocity. Its hard to really remember eveything about the dive but it was so much fun and you really fall fast. I looked down at the earth slowly getting closer with so much wind in my face and just realised how high we were...i totally get why people are scared but once you are falling it is almost like well if i die now who cares this feeling is amazing. I haver turned into an adrenaline junkie on this trip. When that parachute opens so much relief comes haha. I dont care what anyone says..its always a relief when you know the shute has opened. We glided down for the next 4-5 minutes or so with the instrutor doing circles in the sky and we came to do a land on the beach. When i landed i was speachless of how amazing it was. If i had the money i would do it again..so much fun but thats a big tick in the box for me..brillaint!

The rest of the time in mission beach we just chilled out and relaxed until our bus left for airlie beach which is where i am now and yes you have read my facebook..I have lost my phone..it was in my pocket, must have dropped out and some bastered hasnt handed it in so there is that gone...i suppose your not a true travller if you havent lost anything. Not so much annoyed at the phone..its just a phone, it was the pictures i didnt manage to upload on facebook so i guess i will have to just look back and be happy for those ones. Ill have to buy a digicam very soon so the pics will resume i promise. Other than that the only other news and me and russ are splitting for a while then catching up somewhere later down the line, he is going on a boat on whit sundies for more diving for a few days and i am heading further south. I know this has been a long blog and hope you havent go too bored reading but it has been quite possibly the best week of my life with all that has happened. Thats what this trip is about!

So once again Love you all and will be home fairly soon..keep me updated.

GOOSE OUT!!!!